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"Immigrant, migrant, emigrant, exile. Where do the birds gather?"
So begins "Migrations" -- a soul-stirring poem by acclaimed Ghanaian author Abena Busia. "Migrations" was published in "Testimonies of Exile"–a collection of poems in which Busia describes the uncertainty, anguish and nostalgia that often shadows the immigrant experience.
I'm an award-winning photographer and writer from the Caribbean island of St. Croix. I’m also the producer of an upcoming documentary feature film that explores ancient African healing practices and modern science. The film is entitled Across The King’s River. Visit us at www.acrossthekingsriver.com or join the mailing list on this website, and we’ll give you regular behind-the -scenes updates on this important film PLUS we’ll enter your name in a drawing to win a unique promotional T-shirt.
Since 1989, I've been living in Oakland, California with my wife, Stephanie, and my children, Malcolm, Tulani and Diallo. As the years pass, I've come to believe that we all live in exile -- sometimes from country, sometimes from inner self and almost always from each other. How else can one account for our uneasiness? Our seamless transition "from guns to guns again: again," as poet Abena Busia says.
In the song "Corazon Guerrero", Willie Colon, the New-York born salsero, poses a rhetorical question: "Si todos sabemos que somos hermanos y hermanos, porque formamos barreras y guerras?" (If we know that we're brothers and sisters, why do we erect barriers and frontiers?)"
James Baldwin, the celebrated African- American writer, once said: "All men are brothers; that's the bottom line. If you can't take it from there, you can't take it at all".
Like Baldwin and Colon, I, too, am opposed to the notion of frontiers. The walls we have erected around us have worked too well for too long. But in shutting others out, we seem to forget that we shut ourselves in. This website was created in the spirit of openness; it began as a class project for an anthropology course took I took more than a decade ago at Cal-State Hayward. And over the years it has grown.
Our assignment was to write a web-essay on a culture of our choice. I chose to give voice to the culture I grew up with in the Virgin Islands. And I will do so by weaving images, sound and personal anecdotes.
I also reserve the right to make references to cultures other than my own. "We have lived that moment of the scattering of the people", says poet Abena Busia.
And so, "Immigrant, migrant, emigrant, exile, After the last sky, Where do the birds fly?"
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